Mitch Hurwitz Is Working On A Major Edit To ‘Arrested Development’ Season 4

Eventually, there’s going to be a fifth season of Arrested Development, probably, as well as a Koogler movie that will break box-office records worldwide. But until then, Mitch Hurwitz is working on an edit of season four that would certainly change things, probably for the better. Here’s what he said in an interview with Pretentious Film Majors (around 6:35):

“Right now, I’m cutting a version of season four that tells it chronologically.”

My initial late-night binge is the only time I’ve watched a full episode from season four, partially because of the impressive, yet tiresome “one character, one episode” gimmick, but mostly because I’d always just end up listening to “Getaway,” instead. But if Hurwitz were to release this new edit, and trim out some of the extra-long episode’s fat, then it might be worth another go-around, if only for more “and Jeremy Piven.”

If it’s edited with the overlapping character arcs, totally works better. The first Tobias episode is basically the other side of the first Lindsey episode where Tobias was barely out of frame the entire episode. Plus we don’t spend 40 min with George Sr. wandering in the desert. Lucille gets in some and Buster. It probably makes it feel more like an ensemble but while not as good as S1-3, the character burnout from 35 min of Lindsey, Tobias, or George Sr is gone because as soon as we’re losing interest, we switch.

Mitch has said season 4 didn’t turn out like he thought he planned by the episodes able to be viewed out of order. Now chronological is the opposite of the original vision but we should get a more coherent story and not have to use the Arrested wiki to figure out the timeline of season 4 when you rematch it. Seriously, on 5th, 6th, 7th viewings, it’s hard to figure out when everything is happening

I thought the weakest part of Season 4 was the odd episode would run abnormally long (the George Sr. wandering the desert for 40 minutes as Lomez pointed out).

Without network limitations on run time, it seemed like it ended up hurting some installments, particularly in the beginning. A lot of people seemingly abandoned it partway through because of this. The Fox network mishandled this show in epic fashion, but having rigid 22 minute episodes made the storylines air-tight.